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video: #DefendSafeSchools

Too many people who need to know this, don’t. Further, too many people who need to see it this way, don’t. Making homophobia and transphobia and bi erasure about you when it suits you, during times of mass tragedy or mass celebration, and when it doesn’t suit you, during times of actual policy change and true leadership, making it about little insignificant me, is no longer tolerable. If you want to make it about “all of us”, then when you’ve finished grieving for people who’ve lost their community, their sense of public safety, some even their lives, then I hope you get onto actually picking up a flag and a voting slip and having our back where it really counts. Please. Please.

I ask that you forgive the long-form. And the emotion. And the production values. And that I have used homophobia as an umbrella-term, as I have used LGBT as an umbrella term that should include Intersex, Asexual and Queer people. I also ask that you consider the following points that have inexplicably become nails in the coffin of anti-homophobia education:

If a student is expressing feeling unsafe or angry because they behave as though anti-homophobia education compromises their beliefs or value structure, then they are the student that needs counselling and parent-teacher conferencing, more support than anyone to understand why it’s not alright to hate or victimise someone for who they are, in any case nor under any conditions.

Rather than cutting social inclusion education, I actually believe there should be more of it. Programs that educate anti-homophobia, programs that open students’ eyes to living with a disability, programs that explore Indigenous Australian perspectives. If anything, parents should take the responsibility of reading, writing and ‘rithmetic so schools can make sure they breed global citizens of empathy and inclusion. Scholastic aptitude is so important, but without the emotional intelligence to operate that aptitude functionally or with a mind to build bridges between an ever-intermingling, ever-diversifying globe, those skills are inefficient at best, entirely impotent at worst.

I myself would like to think I could have some control over my child’s education when that time comes for me, but if I’m trying to curate my child’s curriculum to suit my value structure as an adult, then I really ought to home school them because placing a child in a school environment for them to only socialise with who I approve of, and learn only what I think is appropriate, being taught only by professionals I like, is entirely counterintuitive.

If you think children aren’t being sexualised years prior to anti-homophobia education programs, then I’ll assume your child watches not a single second of television, nor interacts with any shred of the internet, nay read a single page of a contemporary book. Think about what kind of concepts Cinderella teaches young girls (or indeed young boys!), think about what movies like Toy Story show young children. Think now about what they don’t show or teach young people who won’t grow up to be straight, or white. Children are being shown images of romance and innuendo and violence earlier on than ever, without any context or education to help them process it gradually. Sex education confronts young people with knowledge, all-at-once at whatever age seems appropriate with no follow-up, review or support for children trying amalgamate that knowledge with their experience of the world.

Asking a student “how do you know you’re gay?” or “what did you say to Rebecca before she punched you?” to an LGBTIQA student who has just been victimised by homophobic or transphobic bullying, to me is akin to asking a woman what she was wearing or how much she’d had to drink before being assaulted. Don’t victim-blame children, much less adults.

Thank you for watching, and reading. Bear in mind I will not tolerate any homophobia, Islamophobia in the comments section of this blog or on the video. What I will accept are earnest questions and critical thoughts that deepen, challenge or clarify the content.